


drips.

by zombiejosette



Category: Dark Shadows (1966), Dark Shadows (2012), Dark Shadows - All Media Types, Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 21:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6873166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiejosette/pseuds/zombiejosette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>drabbles written for a tumblr meme, compiled here for your reading pleasure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He thinks of her. She knows he does. Bright eyes burned into his, leering into his mind, flame of a lit candle held to his heart.

She thinks of him and he thinks of her and she keeps him close, close, close so that he thinks of nothing but. Destruction and damnation and hellfire and he’s worse than a priest, Angelique knows, but _he thinks of her and she’s there_ , oh, she’s always there. She lives and she dances in his mind, pirouettes on his skull, takes his curses and cries as applause and it’s a spotlight she can’t resist.


	2. red/victor - horror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> once upon a time | red/victor | prompt: horror

It thunders. Lightning brightens the sky for seconds at a time, but it does not rain. It never does; there’s always the warning in this monochrome world, but the trees are dead (Ruby wonders when this land last saw water).

The mob’s threats, however, are not so empty.

She’s heard things of the doctor; they all have: Solitary in his tower, candles burning - a madman and the only one who can save her now. She’s a sight, vivid, red cloak and all, but her fist beats against the wooden door. Her heart stops when she hears it creak open.


	3. dark shadows | keeping a secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | elizabeth and victoria | keeping a secret

_There are no secrets at Collinwood._

But there are, as much as Victoria tries to convince herself that it’s nothing but a big house on a hill, that the carpet in the halls is threadbare and the doors are made of oak. The secrets leak from the walls in whispers, sentences cut short, glances averted.

The tables turn when Roger crashes, when brake valves make their way into her dresser and it falls back to David. He cries and Victoria hears and Elizabeth knows.

The glances turn to her now, an unspoken promise to keep a secret in her own walls.


	4. dark shadows | cat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | natalie du pres, joshua collins | cat

Natalie doesn’t take the Collins family for cat lovers.

Witches have them, she thinks she’s heard Joshua say (it was then that Natalie found she was adjusting, of all horrors, and she recognized Abigail’s words and tone in Joshua’s voice). They cause an uproar in the kitchen.

The one before her now is well-behaved, sitting nicely and staring ( _glaring_ , she doesn’t let herself think), black spots on white fur and a nose that twitches almost humanly. 

It doesn’t frown. That’s just the way its face is shaped.

Natalie plucks it from the ground and doesn’t ask where it came from.


	5. dark shadows | silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | nicholas/angelique | silence

He stares at her, back against the mantle, dark eyes blazing in the firelight, and Angelique does not let herself find his silence frightening. Doesn’t let her fingers wring into the lace of her skirt, does not picture in the bend of his spine something canine - a snake, rather, curling to strike.

She keeps him in her sights, a waiting victim perhaps, but he works her (and how he works) and plays her, moves her like a puppet, but does not break her. She does not shatter because he does not let her (He needs her).

She matches him.


	6. dark shadows | broken pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | quentin and carolyn (1995) | broken pieces

Quentin does not respond when Carolyn asks why he doesn’t age. Why he seems younger than before, shaky speech and eyes so wide they threaten to swallow his face.

He doesn’t know how, how to say he’s older than he’s ever felt, that the bones beneath his skin are as weak as ice and melting faster. He rots and breaks faster than the great estate and show does she, he knows. She wears it on her face, a wrinkle for every year, one more hair out of place.

He tells her she’s seeing things. They both balance on shaky ledges.


	7. dark shadows | hold my hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | roger/victoria | hold my hand

Roger reaches for her before she can say anything, and he clutches her hand like a lifeline.

His hand is cold and she feels it shake in hers, despite how she adds her other to it to still him (she can do nothing for the glass of brandy, liquid so close to sloshing over the brim). He does not look at the fireplace, Victoria notices, flames rising higher until she cannot face them, either, lest she see the boathouse and a reality in which David is consumed with them.

She feels the ice in his hands seep through her skin.


	8. dark shadows | can you hear me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | 2012 | can you hear me

He tells himself David’s lying. That David is five and David watched his mother tumble overboard, that David was helpless as his mother drowned ( _but so did he and so was he_ ).

David is disturbed, he tells himself. 

He has to, or else his bed is too empty and the night is too silent; or else he chokes her name into the dark, or else he’s talking to himself because there’s nothing there.

Because Laura is not there.

David nudges his shoulder at dawn to wake him and _he saw Mom again._

“What did I tell you about lying, David?”


	9. dark shadows | smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | david and amy | smile

It doesn’t take much to coax a smile from Amy. David’s used to storm clouds, not rays of sunshine (such as the adults have described her as) creeping into the house, sitting on the stairs, lace on her socks and a barrette in her hair.

She follows him when he doesn’t need it, scurries back when he scolds, but the hallway is dark again and he finds that he misses her.

He finds her in the drawing room, sitting on the sofa and her feet don’t touch the ground.

He hands her a magazine, a piece offering, and she grins.


	10. dark shadows | mischief managed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | david and amy | mischief managed

It’s a game, they say, by way of hand-waving. An explanation that isn’t one at all, with the way it leaves Maggie and Elizabeth and the rest staring after them as they dart upstairs.

It’s a game to sit at the old phone and wait for its ring to sting their ears, a game to pause and a game to rush to grab it first. A game to find the clothes and wear them and it’s all authenticity, isn’t it? It’s what actors do. It’s all only make-believe.

And Quentin will be pleased.

The adults keep staring and they grin.


	11. dark shadows | smile (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | carolyn/victoria | smile

Victoria smiles, and she smiles frequently. She doesn’t light up rooms with a simple curve of her mouth (then again, Carolyn thinks, it takes more than that to beat the dust and dark out of Collinwood); it’s kept between Victoria and the one who put it there, a knowing whisper. A secret.

Carolyn doesn’t let herself think the latter. There are enough of those in an old place like this one.

But she sneaks lingering looks when she sees Victoria light up for herself, takes a moment to revel in the warmth it puts in the pit of her stomach.


	12. dark shadows | tears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | willie/maggie | tears

Her wails reverberate off the walls and float up into the Old House at night.

Willie hears him in his bed, covers pulled around his head and Barnabas knocks on his door, voice deep and a command to do something about her.

He watches her from a barred window and her frame grows thinner with every sob that chokes through her. This isn’t the girl he wants, no, it never was (as long as she screams, she never will be). Her crying isn’t a sweet melody, Willie knows, but it’s her (it’s _Maggie_ ), and he feels sick to change it.


	13. dark shadows | hold my hand (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | barnabas/julia | hold my hand

She doesn’t know what compels her to do it, she tells herself (she does, though; she knows better than anyone ever will) as it happens, as she reaches across the chair and covers his hand, clenched on the armrest, with hers. He does not move and they do not speak, only exchanging cautious glances and this is the only way she can help, she thinks. There are no more experiments and no more serums; his hand is warm and blood flows through his veins, _he doesn’t have to be so cold anymore_.

He stands. They don’t speak of it again.


	14. dark shadows | in the rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | 2012 | in the rain

Angelique sees her on the dock, rain pouring down, near freezing in the October wind, and she doesn’t say a word. Victoria’s small and the water drips from the blue of her coat, stains her hair to a dark brown, sticks it to the back of her neck. She stares out to sea, the waves choppy, slicing against the wood below her. She’s serene against their violence, almost a bright beacon, grounded.

She belongs there.

The thought is bitter in Angelique’s mind and churns her stomach. _She doesn’t._

She holds her umbrella high and leaves the girl behind, heels clicking.


	15. dark shadows / ouat | blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows / ouat | regina mills, barnabas collins | blood

He doesn’t see the truth as she reaches for him, but he never does. It’s all images in his mind, all her screams as he draws an arm around her, all teeth to her neck and bittersweet blood draining from her pulse (all gasps cut short as it’s her body that falls, not his that hits the ground with a dull noise).

His heart doesn’t glow bright red as she draws it from his chest. It’s a dry husk, dark gray; ashes fall, he swears, and the color drains from her face (blood to drip to his mouth, he thinks).


	16. dark shadows | do not disturb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | barnabas/victoria | do not disturb

They take tea in the drawing room, just the two of them. She sits on the edge of her chair, fingers twisted gracefully in her cup’s handle, and the doors are closed to the foyer and to the rest of the family.

Barnabas does not drink. He watches her instead (only to stop himself, hand clutching the silver wolf’s head of his cane, glancing down at the floor). He keeps her talking, watches her drink, focuses his attention away from her mouth and how pretty it would be stained deep scarlet and teeth sharp.

He stays fixed on the sofa.


	17. dark shadows | breathe again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dark shadows | 2012 | josette & victoria | breathe again

Josette is nothing but a stream of thoughts, repeated motions and a mind caged by silence. She sees but cannot speak, can only observe and it’s all too familiar (wind in her hair, slicing her skin, body screaming to run as she plummets from the cliff). 

The balcony is cold and _you’ll catch your death out here_ , Barnabas says (to Victoria, but Josette is nearby. She feels him and _he sees her_ ). No, not yet, Josette knows but cannot say. But she, _Victoria_ , hesitates and Josette lets herself in, lets herself breathe, just once, to be the one with him.


End file.
